More than 20 million people woke last week to a thick, acrid, and noxious smog that settled densely across the Indian capital. <\/p>\n
Primary schools were forced to shut, vehicles restricted from traveling on roads and construction brought to a halt as a hazy gray enveloped New Delhi, blocking buildings from view and prompting residents to panic buy air purifiers. <\/p>\n
Behind closed doors, state authorities and federal officials gathered to put together a plan that would clean up the city\u2019s air after its Air Quality Index (AQI) passed 500 \u2013 a figure so high that experts warn\u00a0it could be shaving more than a decade off the life expectancy of those who live there. <\/p>\n
But the scene is hardly unprecedented. <\/p>\n
Every year, New Delhi\u2019s skies turn the same sickly yellow, prompting the same scramble by authorities to crackdown on the pollution. Every year, around this time, headlines about the issue dominate the news, reminding the country\u2019s 1.4 billion people that smog season is back with a vengeance. <\/p>\n
And every year, people ask why nothing has changed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an invisible killer,\u201d said Jyoti Pande Lavakare, author of \u201cBreathing Here is Injurious to Your Health: The Human Cost of Air Pollution\u201d and co-founder of clean air non-profit Care for Air. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd unfortunately, there is just no political will to solve this problem from any party. There is not one party that has put its head down and said, \u2018we are sickening the entire country and let\u2019s fix it\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
New Delhi\u2019s current toxic skies are reminiscent of another major Asian capital that about a decade ago was famous for a smog so thick that it could shroud entire skyscrapers from view: Beijing. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s capital has since cleaned up its act, which begs the question: if Beijing can clean up its toxic air, why can\u2019t India too? <\/p>\n
Like India, rapid industrialization and urbanization contributed to China\u2019s remarkable rise as an economic superpower.\u00a0And like India\u2019s expansion, China\u2019s came with an environmental cost: a deep reliance on fossil fuels and emission heavy industries that was making the air putrid with pollutants. <\/p>\n
In Beijing, a city of nearly 22 million people, the air had become so bad that it was widely referred to as the \u201cair-pocalypse.\u201d Hospitals were often flooded with respiratory patients, and residents \u2013 especially families with children \u2013 were so desperate that many left the city to take jobs further south, and even overseas, where the air was better. <\/p>\n
The United States embassy in Beijing published its own air quality data, infuriating Chinese officials but also raising awareness among the Chinese public about how bad things had become. <\/p>\n
A key moment in China\u2019s fightback came in 2013, when the government started to invest billions of dollars into a national air pollution action plan. <\/p>\n
What followed was a rollout of new regulations, including restricting\u00a0the number\u00a0of vehicles on the roads\u00a0in major cities, tightening\u00a0environmental oversight and controls on emissions,\u00a0building a\u00a0nationwide\u00a0system of\u00a0air monitoring stations, and\u00a0reining in\u00a0coal\u00a0and other heavy-polluting industries. <\/p>\n
Beijing, said Frank Christian Hammes, Global CEO of IQAir, \u201ctook it seriously.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe see electrification. In restaurants, and on street food vendors, we don\u2019t see coal being used anymore. The power generators have shifted to gas. All this has made a big difference,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In the decade since, China has seen its air quality improve dramatically. The country\u2019s pollution levels in 2021 had fallen 42% from 2013, according to a report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which praised its \u201cstaggering success in combating pollution.\u201d <\/p>\n
A decade later, Beijing has long fallen off the top of the world\u2019s worst pollution list and currently ranks 27 on the ranking by IQAir, a Swiss company that tracks global air quality. <\/p>\n
New Delhi started the week by once again clinching the top spot. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s raft of clean air policies have been so successful, they have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, research has shown. <\/p>\n
The report warned, however, there is still work to do and Beijing\u2019s particulate pollution \u2013 the tiny but highly dangerous pollutants that can evade the human body\u2019s usual defenses \u2013 is still 40% higher than in the most polluted county in the United States. <\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the data shows China is on the right track. And many in India want to see similar progress in their country. <\/p>\n
\u201cIndia has everything in place to change what\u2019s happening. We have science and the finance, but we lack a reduction-based approach,\u201d said Sunil Dahiya, from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in New Delhi. <\/p>\n
In comparison to Beijing\u2019s strict measures that were intended for long-term success, New Delhi\u2019s have been \u201creactive,\u201d he argued. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not solutions,\u201d Dahiya added. <\/p>\n
Traditionally, toward the end of the year after the winter harvest, millions of farmers clear their leftover rice stubble by setting fields alight to prepare for the incoming wheat crop. This, together with vehicular and industrial pollution, has created copious amounts of smog across the northern Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi. <\/p>\n
Tens of millions of poor households in the country also continue to rely on cheap and harmful fuels for cooking. <\/p>\n
At a nationwide level, India launched its Clean Air Programme in 2019, ushering in strategies across 24 states and union territories to reduce particulate matter concentration by 40% by 2025-26. The measures include cracking down on coal-based power plants, setting up air monitoring systems and banning burning of biomass. <\/p>\n
Some Indian cities have seen improvements in their air quality, according to government data. But a lack of strict enforcement and coordination means progress has been slow, experts suggest. <\/p>\n
To deal with New Delhi\u2019s persisting pollution, officials have tried <\/strong>sprinkling water on the roads, restricting traffic by requiring vehicles with odd or even license plates to travel on alternating days, and constructing in 2018 two smog towers worth 200 million rupees ($2.4 million), which are intended to act as giant air purifiers. <\/p>\n Though it isn\u2019t increasing, between 2018 and 2022, New Delhi\u2019s average PM2.5 concentration (a measure of pollutants in the air) for the month of November, when the pollution season typically begins, has stayed more or less the same, according to IQAir. <\/p>\n This November alone, New Delhi has remained on the top of IQ Air\u2019s list of most polluted cities for at least five days so far. To tackle the problem the city this year plans to induce rain to wash away the dust \u2013 a method adopted by other Asian countries, including China, Indonesia and Malaysia. <\/p>\n However, scientists say it is unclear how effective this method really is. <\/p>\n \u201cThese are just band-aid solutions,\u201d said Hammes. \u201cWe need to address the underlying issues. And that is stopping biomass burning and switching to cleaner fuels.\u201d <\/p>\n China\u2019s authoritarian one-party system, unlike India\u2019s democracy, means that officials follow orders quickly, experts say. <\/p>\n \u201cWith Beijing, once the government decided they were going to tackle pollution, they did it,\u201d said Lavakare from Care for Air. \u201cThe same could be achieved in India \u2013 maybe even faster \u2013 but it\u2019s just not a national concern. It\u2019s a systemic failure year after year. And nobody seems to want to solve it.\u201d <\/p>\n Publicly, local and national leaders repeatedly trade blame for the capital\u2019s toxic air. <\/p>\n Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi\u2019s chief minister and leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, considered to be the antithesis of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has been accused of \u201cinaction and insensitivity\u201d by members of the national government. <\/p>\n They say Kejriwal\u2019s team has done little in terms of implementing effective policies to clean New Delhi\u2019s air. \u201cDelhiites are complaining of itching and breathlessness and children are falling ill. Only Kejriwal is responsible for all this,\u201d said Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva. <\/p>\n The AAP has retaliated by accusing the federal government of cutting their funding to tackle pollution and failing to take the issue seriously. <\/p>\n During a Supreme Court hearing last week, judges Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia appeared visibly irritated at the political backsliding. \u201cThere cannot be a political battle every time. We are at zero level patience on this issue now,\u201d they said as they instructed authorities to ban fireworks ahead of Diwali and stop farmers from burning crops. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery party had at least air pollution in their agenda, but over time because of other factors that momentum has been lost,\u201d said Dahiya from CREA. <\/p>\n Pollution might be taking a back seat, even for India\u2019s citizens, Dahiya said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt picks up at times and dies down,\u201d he added. \u201cIndia is faced with lots of other vulnerabilities. It might not be an issue they talk about every day. But it\u2019s one they certainly face every day.\u201d <\/p>\n When millions celebrated Diwali last weekend, many defiantly took to the streets, with little to no pushback from authorities, bursting firecrackers that emitted more smoke into the sky. <\/p>\n As a result, New Delhi started the week as the most polluted city in the world, with a \u201chazardous\u201d AQI level higher than 420, according to IQAir. <\/p>\n \u201cYour most vulnerable population will be affected for the rest of their lives,\u201d said Hammes from IQAir. \u201cYou\u2019re not even giving a fighting chance for an entire generation, really.\u201d <\/p>\n Lavakre, from Care for Air, said people will lose years off their lives. <\/p>\n \u201cHow do you even begin to come to terms with that?\u201d\u00a0she said. <\/p>\n\n More than 20 million people woke last week to a thick, acrid, and noxious smog that settled densely across the Indian capital. Primary schools were forced to shut, vehicles restricted from traveling on roads and construction brought to a halt as a hazy gray enveloped New Delhi, blocking buildings from view and prompting residents to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} A blame game<\/h2>\n